Gardeners commonly hang flowerpots and planter boxes from the wooden railings on their porches or decks. Common methods include securing hooks or brackets with nails or screws to the horizontal railings, or to the vertical posts or “balusters” that support the railings. This mars the balusters and railings, however, and is often undesirable or prohibited.
Brackets that hook or slide onto balusters or similar vertical posts are known, but suffer from several shortcomings. A common type represented in the prior art is a cantilever-arm design in which an angled hook or loop at the base of the horizontal arm frictionally engages the baluster, for example as shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,908,982 to Quatrini; 6,971,204 to Gibney; and 3,272,467 to Kassube. This design is relatively weak, usually shown holding a single flowerpot (or bucket in the case of Kassube). Moreover, these brackets must typically be applied from the side of the baluster, making them suitable only for relatively widely spaced balusters or for the endmost balusters on the railing.
Another problem with many prior art brackets is their limited ability to be used effectively in pairs, either serially to support long planter boxes, or in opposing fashion extending from the front and rear faces of a single baluster.